Meta is once again facing trial over risks its platforms may pose to children. The trial kicked off in a California federal court Tuesday with four states seeking billions of dollars in damages as well as fundamental changes to how Meta functions. The advocates and parents of social media victims gathered outside the federal courthouse in Oakland, California with banners having names children and young adults who have died from social media related harms, including deaths by suicide after bouts of cyberbullying or sextortion. Giovanni, an 11-year-old, Bubba, a 13-year-old, and Englyn, a 14-year-old, were among the nearly 600 names.
Meta is accused of contributing to the youth mental health crisis
Megan O'Neill, a deputy attorney general for the California Department of Justice, in her opening statement said that it's up to jury to decide whether the states' attorneys general have made their case that the tech giant designed its apps to "hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data and hide the truth from the public."
Four states - California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are now participating in the trial, the other 25 will go later. The company also faces lawsuits in state courts, including one underway in Tennessee, as reported by news agency AP.
Meta is accused of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms and hides these harms from the public. The lawsuit also argued that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents' consent, in violation of federal law.
According to the Deputy Attorney General, "You are going to hear that Meta knew a lot about kids' brains. This includes how they are constantly seeking rewards, how they are sensitive to social feedback and "how they are still developing their ability to control impulses the way adults do."
"The young ones are the best ones' is a title of a Meta study we are going to show you," she said, telling jurors that for Meta, "kids are the product."
Meta also was aware of that kids under 13 were using its products. "For instance, when Meta found that someone on Facebook was under 13, it would disable the person's Facebook account but not their connected account on Instagram," the attorney general said.
The states called their first witness Arturo Béjar who got wide attention during his tenure as to combat cyberbullying. He returned from 2019 to 2021 as a contractor to work on safety issues. Béjar said that, contrary to Meta's statements, the company's research on safety issues was not being used to improve products, AP reported.
Meta blames kids for unauthorised usage of Apps
Meanwhile, Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt in his opening statement tried to blame kids and their unauthorised usage of Apps. He said, though kids under 13 are not supposed to be on its apps, some lie about their ages, post "negative content" on Facebook and Instagram.
But he said he will focus on the work Meta does to make its platforms safer and share information with the public. "Much of this lawsuit is about the government attorneys and their witnesses saying in trying to improve, we'd do it a little differently," Schmidt said.
"In talking about how to improve, we disagree with how you talk about it. It's meaningful, and the evidence will be meaningful, these efforts Meta has taken to improve," he said.
US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland is overseeing the proceedings, which are expected to last six weeks with testimony from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives and former employees.
-With AP Inputs.
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